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15 March, 2011

So, I've been talking to a few people recently over a potentially awesome new list you can field with the new Grey Knights codex. I'll start out with the basics and we'll see how long it takes to catch on to the plan.

1. Servo Skulls. Several HQs and an Elite choice can take 3 each for some minimal cost like 5 points a piece. They reduce scatter on Deepstrikes and Blast Weapons as well as limiting Scouts/Infiltrate moves within 12". They can be fielded anywhere outside the enemy deployment zone. When the enemy gets within 6" they die.

2. Orbital Strike Relay (OSR). Amazing in the new codex. Three choices: Barrage Bomb, Lance Strike, Psyk-out Bomb. UNLIMITED uses. You can fire one per turn during Shooting provided you did not move during Movement. So you can have one model firing up to 7 Orbital Strikes. You do need LOS, but the range is Unlimited!

3. Grand Masters and Brother-Captains can take OSRs. Both your HQs can have them. Awesome. For some variation, Inquisitor Lord Karamazov is particularly mean. He can use his own men as "Orbital Strike Beacons." He costs the same as a Brother-Captain with OSR.

4. Techmarines. Techmarines? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, sir. Yes. You know why? 140 point Orbital Strikes. Every Techmarine can take an OSR for an upgrade, so you can bolster some ruins and chill in them, calling down strikes. Why yes, they are the Elite choice that can take Servo Skulls.

Of course, I don't have the codex yet, so I don't have the exact costs, but that should fall into the 1700-1750 range depending on the upgrades chosen. Basically you take your 15 skulls and grid them out over the field. You will lose a lot to enemy movement. They're just Servo Skulls. Who cares? The point is that if they destroy one, they should be in 12" range of another. Your OSR bearers will sit back and wait for the enemy to come to you. And to stymie those efforts, you have Strike Squads to prevent Deepstriking and Skulls to prevent Scout and Infiltrates. If the enemy does make it across the board, they have to make it through Strike Squads.

Another fun trick is to spend another 25 points to make a Brother-Captain a Grand Master so you can make units Scoring. This could be your Techmarines, or it could be Interceptors if you give up a Strike Squad (or if playing sufficiently high point games not even that).

The End Result is EXTERMINATUS: Up to 35 Orbital Strikes in one game. It's probably not the most competitive list, but it's gimmicky and silly enough that it'll probably throw your opponent off-kilter. For kicks, add in a house-rule: After 6 Orbital Strikes in one game, the entire board takes a S10 AP1 hit. Obviously the armies got caught in an EXTERMINATUS attempt during the battle.

09 March, 2011

Yeah. I know the new GKs are up for preorder. If you didn't know that too, well, now you do! I love the models. I think my favorite is the Draigo model. The helmeted variant, of course. I mean, just look at that shield! So I'm deciding on what to pick up. The crazy side of me says dump $400 and grab the codex, Draigo, 2 Dreadknights, 2 boxes of Terminators, 4 boxes of PAGKs, and a Techmarine. The Techmarine gets one of the spare Terminator heads (each box has 13 heads! They must have gotten Space Wolves fever putting it together). I'll say the Terminator box may be the best value out of them. You get a TON of options on the three sprues. You could probably even convert up a Librarian using the Warding Staff.

03 March, 2011

I got back from a couple weeks visiting friends and family. This means I got in a couple interesting games--one with Grey Knights and the other with the inaugural flight of the guppies. Fun Fact! Battle Missions is a good book. I'll have those Battle Reports up this weekend.

In the meantime, I've been thinking of what I can do to pare down my 1850 list to a solid 1500. The easy way out is naturally to drop the terminators or something silly like that. Or, if you know me at all, you'll have already guessed what I'd do. Of course, I'd rein in the Assault Marines. By cutting the 3 squads in half, I cut about 350 points. Boom. Done. The following list remains:

17 February, 2011

*Nemesis Ward Staff can be only bought for one Grey Knight per squad. So that means only one will be able to take one of those mean wounds.

*Unlike reported before by me and others GKT do not get Storms Shields (with very few exceptions). That means you are stuck with sucky +5 invul saves on termies. What you do get instead is all nemesis force weapons grant a +1 to all invul saves in assault. That means +4 saves in close combat.*A full man unit of Paladins average around 600-800 for 10 of them. So don’t expect to spam many of them.*Add to that the Paladin Captain that makes them troops is the most expensive model in the codex over the cost of a Land Raider.*Sadly the Dread Knight MC thingy cannot be put in a Stormraven.*The worst change that I hinted at back when I first reported the rumors last year. The whole Teleporting Grey Knight once per game thing is for the Grey Knight squads in the Fast Attack slot. That means those guys and the Stormraven are your only FA choices in the entire codex. Normal GKs will not be able to teleport in the game.

Standard disclaimer applies: These are rumors and commentary on rumors. I want the codex now, too. And pics. Gimmeh pics. Here are my thoughts on these rumors:

16 February, 2011

So it has come down the rumor pipeline on Warseer (Thanks, Stickmonkey!) that the Grey Knights release will contain a plastic 10-man PAGK box, a plastic 5-man Terminator box, a plastic Dreadknight kit, and "about a half dozen metal blisters" for the first wave. The second wave should be by late fall and cover some inquisition models.

11 February, 2011

So . . . much . . . epic. Thanks to Katie Drake on Heresy Online. I'm loving the Dreadknight! It's real, people! So when do I get to pre-order 3? I think it'll be around my birthday. . . . So I also hear they're going hard-back for the book. I'm slightly torn on it. I've played D&D for years, so I'm used to carting around plenty of (relatively) thin hard-backs.

I'd love to see nice hard-back codices with all the hobby related pictures in them . . . along with Assault on Black Reach style mini-dexes with the hobby section and maybe even the intro fluff cut out. Even better would be a combo pack! That way I can have a nice pretty book at home and a "travel size" mini-dex for the gaming.

10 February, 2011

Bell of Lost Souls has an Article on Stormraven Tactics up today. It's rather timely as we had a good discussion at work on how to improperly use a Stormraven. Namely, I'm planning to do it wrong. This is what I'm told. If you aren't familiar with what my overall army strategy is for my Blood Angels, here it is:

09 February, 2011

It's official: I'm calling my first Stormraven the Squall Guppy. I went to work mostly on broader areas today, but I still did a couple details like the black trim on the icon under the name. Enjoy the pics.

07 February, 2011

Today I spent some time just working on some of the details to get a break from the wide brush. Thoughts on the Aquila colors? I decided to just go with the opposite color from what they are sitting on instead of a single color for all of them.

The bits at the edge of the glass are really tough to paint

The "feathers" are base-coated Tin Bitz and then drybrushed Dwarven Bronze

I don't know if any of you noticed, but in the previous pictures the tail fin was on backwards. Oops! I've fixed it now.

Yesterday I showed off the partially-constructed bird with some, uh, after-market parts. Today we add some paint! Some parts need to be painted prior to gluing (i.e. cockpit interior), so I'm doing a basic job on that. Due to the clear plastic the detail work will be slightly obscured, so I'm not putting a lot of effort into it, but the basic colors at least need to be done.

I bought a new wide brush today after watching a good, close Grey Scars v. Eldrad game (the Xenos scum lost, don't worry) and put it to work on the nice wide spaces on the Guppy. I've decided to try priming with Astronomican Grey and it looks like it will probably work out really well as a base for both the Bleached Bone and Scab Red. Chaos Black will naturally kill any color it is put on, so the parts I do with black won't be an issue.

It would be really cool to make the cockpit open up (probably by magnetizing). Using the below picture as a reference, I'm thinking the best place to cut it would be just above the aquila (which would make the cut right above the controls) and also above the head along the edge where it raises up to that back portion of the cover piece. Some plasticard is probably needed to cover holes. I'm not going to because it's more work than I'm willing to put in, but if anyone does it and it turns out awesome, let me know!

Base coat is mostly done but still missing arms

I won't be doing a full Battle Report on the game today, but I will likely put together an outsider's analysis of the game (with pictures--I took plenty!) some time tomorrow. It was a good game--albeit at a loser's 2000 points--and it was very back and forth the whole time.

25 January, 2011

So I understand why people insist on doing it. It is a really awesome looking model. A tank that rolls across the field of battle and shoot missiles from a PIPE ORGAN?! Oh yeah. Gimme some of that. Two preferably. Three if you can swing it.

However there is something I need to clear up. Its weapon, the Exorcist Missile Launcher, is a very simple weapon. 48", Strength 8, AP1, Heavy D6. That is the entire profile. No, it is not a Blast weapon. No, it is neither Ordnance nor Barrage.

20 January, 2011

So as most are aware, the Storm Raven is up for preorder (I have 2 coming my way, thanks for asking) and they'll be out the first week of February. Someone on the Internet took a picture of the back of the box and it has the Guppy painted up nicely for the Grey Knights. I approve. So depending on how the turrets swap out (or not) between the Guppy and Razorback and how the GK codex fixes the transport issue for Grey Knights, I may grab a bunch of Razorback kits and make Rhinos for the GKs and apply the Lazorback turrets to my Guppies. Or the LR Assault Cannons might fit! Either way I think the air scoop is probably getting "forgotten."

05 January, 2011

Combining this with the talk of them "liking their rides" makes me giddy. I personally think if they do it right Sisters would look awesome on bikes. But just having some updated tanks would be nice too. Since they'll be out after the "Summer of Fliers" they could very well have their own Fliers in the codex. But the Exorcist being plastic instead of the interesting plastic/metal hybrid will be nice. Some seem to think the Repressor will get an include in the codex.

03 January, 2011

Canoness Commander Ecaterina Revina is the leader of one of the Commanderies of the Order of the Obsidian Rose, a lesser order of the Sisters of Battle. Her armor is the Obsidian Carapace, a suit of Artificer Armor blessed, some say, by the Emperor himself. She carries an Incinerator and the sacred Rose Blade.

She and her order have spent time fighting alongside the Grey Knights, and she and her retinue enjoy some equipment not seen by many Sisters. Canoness Commander Ecaterina Revina herself has an Incinerator while while each member of her retinue has Artificer Armor. Her retinue consists of her Sister-Captain and 4 Sisters-Knight.

01 January, 2011

One year ago if you asked if I'd heard of Games Workshop or Citadel Miniatures, I would have responded with, "No. Who are they?" Around March I got suckered intointerested in this "40k thing" the guys at work were talking about. I got myself some Sisters for my birthday. After that it's been a downward spiralan adventure. We have in turn dragged another down with us and yet another that will be getting back into the game. There's been a veritable explosion of 40k interest around me in the last few months.

As far as this new year goes, who knows what will happen. The Blood Angels get their second wave, the Grey Knights are going to get an update, the Inquisition will attempt to use the Tyranids as a tool (again) and they'll get a second wave around August time-frame (the Nids, that is), and we'll hear some news about the Sisters. If we're lucky, they'll get an update at the end of the year, but I suspect it'll be more of a 2012 thing. If nothing else, the rumor-engine will start up for them. I guess the Necrons will get some love too, but they're not my thing.